


The Lone Healer

by orphan_account



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Kili and Ori are from tumblr, MTF character, Modern AU, Multi, Rule 63, Sibling Incest, and a couple Tolkien jokes, as in there's a doctor Who joke every paragraph, fandom references, genderbent, slight crack, transphobic slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 11:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/810943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fili is an actor who agreed to play in an old cheesy sci-fi series called The Lone Healer to get a chance to live closer to his sister, whom he hasn't seen in years.<br/>That decision has rather unexpected consequences</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lone Healer

It had been a while since Fili had come home. A long, long while. He hadn't seen his sister in five years, and even before that, they'd barely ever been together since their parents' separation when Fili had been six and Kili five. She'd stayed with their mother, while he'd gone with their father, who acted as his agent at the time. He didn't have many memories of their childhood, beside the fact that she'd been a rather boyish little girl, often dressed with his old clothes. He barely knew her at all, but he missed her a lot, and while she was so _awkward_ around him, he felt she probably missed him too.

So when he'd been given a role in some weird old series that was shooting not far from where Kili was living, he hadn't hesitated. The thing was sort of popular anyway, and his agent had been a big fan of it, so it wouldn't hurt his career, and it'd give him some time with his long lost sibling.

Which was how he'd found himself knocking on the door of her apartment one Saturday afternoon.

Which was how he'd met Ori.

Ori was Kili's flatmate. Possibly _more_ than flatmate, though at the end of his visit, Fili wasn't sure of anything, to his great dismay. Ori was a pretty girl, in a nerdy, bookish way, and if Kili wasn't doing anything with her, he'd have tried his chance there.

That first visit was short. Kili was delighted to learn that her brother would live near her for a couple months, but she had exams coming and, from the way she kept glancing at her telly and at the clock, her favourite show was starting soon. She invited Fili to come and have dinner whenever he wanted, though, an offer he gladly accepted.

 

* * *

 

He came two weeks later, after receiving a text from Kili that looked rather urgent and stated that he _had_ to have diner with them that night.

He'd had barely to knock on the door before the girls had dragged him inside and locked the door behind them.

Which.

Would have been creepy and scary if one of them hadn't been his sister.

Actually, even like that it was a bit scary, with the intense way they were staring at him, as if he were some sort of strange creature.

“You're the Healer's new companion!” Kili accused, looking torn between anger and awe. “Why didn't you _say_? I found out from bloody _tumblr_!”

“I'm... what?”

“The Lone Healer's new companion!” Ori squealed in excitement. “Kee had said you were an actor, but I'd never have thought! Oh, have you met Gandalf Legrey yet? He's my favourite Healer, he is!”

“I liked when it was a woman,” Kili protested. “Galadriel is such a dreamy actress, and it's so lame that they've gone back to having a dude in the role, and now with a male companion too... No offence, Fee, but there had been rumours that Marla might come back, and I really hoped she would....”

“It would ruin her character if she came back!” Ori grumbled, rolling her eyes. “Her entire arc led to the fact that she wouldn't stick around! I mean, what they did with Annie was bad enough, and so sexist, and...”

“Girls, please,” Fili interrupted. “Can we pretend for a moment that I have no idea what you're talking about? I mean, I know what the Lone Healer is, because I signed a contract with those words on it, but that's about it, really, so could we try again, slowly?”

This, apparently, was the wrong thing to say. A male companion to the Healer was some sort of an abomination, it seemed, but that was nothing compared to the sin that was not having watched every single episode of a show that had been around for nearly fifty years.

“We watched it together when we were kids,” Kili told him. “Every Saturday I watched it, and if you were home, you watched it with me. We loved it, and we'd play after, pretending to go on great adventures in space together, don't you remember?”

“Not really? I... wasn't home much, you know...”

The way his sister pouted sadly should not have been so adorable and heartbreaking. She made it sound like a nice memory, the sort normal kids had. His memories tended to involve a lot more of being told to keep quiet and wait for the moment to say his line. Playing with his sister must have been something nice.

“So you've never watched The Lone Healer then?” Ori asked. “How did you even lend the job if you don't know a thing about it?”

“My agent is a fan, I think, and I knew we'd be shooting here a lot, so I thought it'd be a nice chance to, you know, catch up with family. Oh, and the fact that I didn't mind kissing a man on camera helped a fair bit, too. It's supposed to remain a bit of a secret, but my character is... well, he's open-minded, we'll say.”

“Is he gay?” Kili asked, her eyes full of hope.

“Is he _bi_?” Ori wondered, looking even more hopeful.

“I think I've heard the word _pan_ ,” Fili admitted with a wink. “And I can't promise anything, but the words 'non monogamous' might also have been said. That's not to get out of this room, though. We haven't even started filming yet, I'll get in trouble if the best bits end up on the internet.”

“We'll keep the secret,” Ori promised, “but on one condition. You've got to come again when you have some free time, and we'll make you watch the entire series. Deal?”

“Oh, that's cruel,” Kili complained. “Making him sit through the Classic Lone, now that's not nice... It's boring and, well, old. Can't we just do the New Lone?”

“I'll make it up to you if you don't complain too much,” Ori promised her. “So, Fili, do we have a deal?”

She looked so serious and solemn that Fili couldn't help laughing.

“I guess we do. It's not like I have much choice, do I?”

 

* * *

 

The Lone Healer wasn't so bad in the end, even what Kili called the Classic Lone, the old series from the 60s. It was terribly cheesy and full of clichés, but it was fun, and the commentaries from the two girls made it even better.

As did the fact that it gave him the excuse to spend an evening almost every week on a couch, between Ori and Kili, both of which liked to cuddle whenever something scary or amusing happened.

 

* * *

 

“I'm told you've started watching the Lone Healer to prepare for the series?” Gandalf asked one evening, after a day spent in the hands of the make-up artists.

Proper filming started the following week.

Fili didn't feel ready, but he was glad that Gandalf seemed determined to be on friendly terms with him, taking him out when the stress was getting too much.

“My sister's idea,” he explained. “Big fan of the Healer. I think she's got a bit of a crush, really. But before you ask, I'm not introducing her to you, she's too young for you. Young and innocent and shy. She's one of these internet girls, the ones who make drawings and stories, I think.”

“You managed to to call her innocent, and then to say she's an internet girl. That's how people can tell you've never worked on something with a big fanbase before, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Internet girls aren't _innocent_.”

* * *

 

Except Ori and Kili _were_ innocent, Fili was convinced of it. One just had to see the shy way they were almost-not-quite-flirting with each other to know they were adorable little nerds who had probably never been in love before and just didn't know how to handle their feelings. It really made him want to help them, though he didn't know how. He'd never been very good at the whole romance thing himself, and he knew he would only make things worse if he meddled with their lives.

Which didn't mean he wouldn't try anyway.

Kili was late in coming home one Friday (the day when they had decided to have their Lone Healer watching sessions) because she had a group project to prepare. Ori assured Fili that his sister would come soon though, so he stayed, and decided to take this chance to learn more about his sister's relationship to her roommate.

“So, how long have you known Kee, then?” he asked Ori while she prepared pop-corn.

Ori froze.

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, you're her best friend, I'm her brother, it's normal that I'd want to know more about you, right?”

“I suppose. I'm just surprised you wouldn't ask her instead.”

“Things are still pretty weird with Kee,” he admitted. “She closes down every time I try to ask her questions about her life. I know that we've been apart for a while, and I get that she'd be angry at me for basically disappearing and everything, but it's a bit much to just decide that I'm not allowed to catch up now, don't you agree?”

Ori turned on the heat under her pop-corn, and looked at Fili as if he were very, very stupid.

“Has it occurred to you that maybe she just has things she doesn't want to talk about to anyone, and that it's not about you at all? She's had... well, it's not my place to tell you 'bout it, really. But she's got bad things happening to her, and I really get why she wants to keep quiet 'bout it, then it's her right.”

“But you know about it.”

“I'm her friend. I've known her for ten years. Internet friends, we both shipped Spock and Bones and we role-played them. And then the Lone Healer came back on telly, and it was Daisy and Nine with a side dish of Ricky for ever for us. Then she moved here for her school, and we got to hang out a lot, and when she broke up with her ex, she came to live here. That's pretty much the entire story.”

“I'm not sure I understood a single word you said. You lost me at 'we shipped Spock', I'm afraid.”

Ori giggled at that.

“Sorry, I always forget you're a peasant! Don't worry about it, it just... means we had a common passion. She was so sweet from the start, too, encouraging me to write and draw even when I was shite at it... she's always been such a great friend! I don't know what I've done without her.”

“You'd have found a life outside the internet?”

“There's no life outside the internet!” Ori replied with a mock gasp of horror. “Don't you know there's fresh air and sun out there? I might... I might catch a tan!”

“Not with a skin like yours, you won't. Kili might, though. It would do her good. She's pale as a corpse. When it's summer, I'll have to take her to Spain. We could go to the beach the three of us. Don't make that face, if you got me to watch a black and white series about a magical old man travelling through space and time, I can get you to a beach.”

It would be nice to see Ori in a swimsuit, he thought, even if he'd never get to do more than look. A traitorous part of his brain noted that Kili in a bikini would also be _quite_ the sight, but he quickly silenced it.

He did _not_ want to see his sister half naked.

Even if she was a very handsome girl, with her dark curl, that huge smile of her that almost always led to a deep laughter, and her big hands...

Not that he was looking at her anyway.

Well, he looked at Kili less than at _Ori_ , at least, so it was safe.

Still, Ori didn't look too pleased with his offer to go on holidays, though she didn't explain why, and the conversation dropped for a while after that. They were both glad when Kili arrived at last, and though she seemed exhausted when she came in, the prospect of their weekly night of cheesy space adventures cheered her up.

And when Ori told her that they would reach the introduction of a certain set of characters that night, Fili thought his sister would faint from sheer happiness.

“The twins!” she squealed. “The twins are coming, the twins are coming! Oh, I take back all I said about classic Lone, the twins are worth all these boring moments!”

“The twins?” Fili repeated.

“They're introduced as brother and sister,” Ori explained, “but the most common fan theory is that they're actually twins separated at birth. Oh, and we think they're shagging.”

“You think _what_?”

“ _I_ don't think they're twins!” Kili objected. “Well, maybe Irish twins, but that's it. Twincest is just... ugh! But they are of a very similar age, and they were living together even before they knew they were related, and they're so horrified when they discover the truth, it's fairly likely they were involved. I think they got back together after a while, even if they seemed to break off after the big reveal.”

Ori nodded in agreement, and Fili stared at them in shock. He knew they liked to imagine that everyone in the Lone Healer was fucking everyone else, regardless of gender, orientation and specie, but it was still unexpected to hear them discuss of incest with a large smile, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He wondered if that was what Gandalf had meant when he had said that internet girls weren't innocent.

“Incest is just a social thing,” Ori pointed out when she noticed he'd been quiet for a while. “I mean, there's a reason behind it, the whole... problem of the risk of consanguinity, but all the taboo's social. The twins are from the future, it's fair to imagine social codes are different for them, you know? And they don't even know they're related, they've lived their whole life as strangers, so it's... okay.”

Fili wasn't entirely convinced by that argument. If really having lived away from your sibling excused the fact that you were sleeping with them, then he could just ask Kili out and have sex with her on the sofa.

A mental image that should _not_ have been appealing.

Thank heaven, Kili seemed just as uncomfortable as he was, and she was quick to turn on the telly, claiming she was too tired to have any sort of philosophical debates that night.

 

* * *

 

It happened a couple weeks later.

They had drunk a fair bit that night, Ori having suggested a drinking game to help them survive what she called 'the void of season 11'. They took a drink each time the Healer said something sexist, racist, or just plain stupid.

By the end of the second episode of the night they were all giggling at everything, and one of them suggested that they should make out on the sofa, since it would be a lot more fun than watching the worse Healer of the entire series fighting against his old enemies. It was a proof of how drunk they all were that they all agreed to that idea.

Fili was very, very pleased when Ori immediately proceeded to snog Kili. He had known there was something in the waiting between them, and even if his only help to their relationship had been to get pissed in their company, he was glad of his contribution. He was even gladder when Ori then decided to kiss him, mumbling something about fairness and wanting to check the differences. She could check all she wanted, as far as he was concerned.

There was a brief moment of blind panic when Ori moved away, and Kili came to kiss him.

That wasn't right.

It wasn't right at all.

But it felt too good to care about _right_.

Fili was fairly sure that they drank again after that, because the giggling and kissing seemed to increase terribly, and he found himself with his hands under his sister's t-shirt, feeling her small breasts while Ori was busy kissing his neck. He knew he would regret this in the morning when he'd be able to think clearly again, but Kili's moans, deep and so _low_ , were worth all the guilt in the world.

He was probably going to hell for this.

Might as well have a good reason to go there.

Still kissing her, one of his hands started to wander toward the buttons of her jeans. There was a bulge there. A solid bulge. That had no reason to be there, because he'd met such things before in his life, but never on people who had breasts. That was the whole point of it. You got the boobs, or you got the D. You didn't get both. That was. Not the way it worked.

He still opened his sister's jeans, hoping that maybe it was just her phone.

It wasn't.

Unless she kept her phone in her pants, and it leaked.

“Kee, you've got a penis.”

He felt her (him? It had to be _him_ if there was a dick, didn't it?) tense in his arms, and Ori's kisses on his neck stopped.

“It-it's not a penis!” Kili protested.

“Kee, I've got one, I know what a dick looks like, even covered. Why... Since when are you a guy?”

“I'm not!”

“Look, I don't know how to break it to you, but having that down there means that you're a man. I don't know how you could reach your age and not... wait, but you've got breasts too! I've felt them, they were real! Are you a tranny?”

Kili froze above him, tears forming in her... his eyes. Ori moved quickly away from Fili and pulled Kili to her, hugging her... him... hugging _Kili_ tightly.

“You. Out!” She snarled at Fili.

“What? Why? What have I done?”

“Out, or I'll break your face. Go away and don't ever come back.”

“What, he's the one who dresses like a girl, and I'm the one who gets treated like a freak?” Fili protested, too drunk to think of anything but the vague impression of betrayal. His sister was his brother, and no one had told him, and Ori was acting like Kili was the one who needed support in this, even though Kili clearly hadn't had any weird surprise that night.

Kili who had broken into tears.

So, maybe he needed a little support then, though Fili still couldn't figure out what had him so upset.

“Why is he crying now?”

“ _He is not crying_!” Kili snapped. “ _She_ is! I'm a _she_ , I'm a _girl_ , do you hear me? _She_ is crying because _her_ brother is a fucking douche and an asshole and a terrible person and _she_ wants you to get the fuck out of _her_ flat before _she_ has to kick your fucking ass!”

“But you're not...”

The punch took him by surprise, to be honest. Kili had always seemed so sweet and shy and, well, weak, in spite of the fact that she was so tall (and of course she... he was tall, being a man. And it explained his big hands, and his deep voice, and all the rest).

Fili would never have expected Kili to hit him, and not that hard either.

“You. Are. Leaving. My. Fucking. Flat.” Kili repeated.

“And if you don't leave on your own, I'll _make_ you leave,” Ori added, looking murderous, and still holding Kili tightly. “You know where the door is.”

He did know where the door was. And he ran to it before anyone hit him again.

When he reached the lift, a bruise was already forming on his cheek.

The make-up guys were going to kill him when they'd see that, and he wouldn't even be able to tell them how he'd ended like that, because 'I tried to fuck my sister but it turned out she's a guy' just wasn't a thing you could tell to your co-workers.

* * *

 

“My sister's got a dick,” Fili told Gandalf two night later when they went for a beer together.

The older man seemed to ponder on that for a moment.

“I don't know what my first reaction should be. Will I ask how you know about your sister's genitals, why you care about that, how you could not have known about it before, or if that sudden revelation has anything to do with the bruise on your face? So many possibilities. I think I'll just ask why you're telling _me_ , instead.”

“I tried to talk to my mother, but she just yelled at me until I hung the phone. I think she mentioned disowning me? And my uncle sent a text this morning saying I was an ass and I should apologize. Coming from a man whose crush thought he hated him for two years before he managed to ask him out, that hurts, you know?”

Gandalf nodded.

“So, about your sister. What's the story?”

“Well, my sister is actually my brother, and everyone knew except me.”

“Did he _say_ he was a man, or do you just assume that because you've discovered that he has a penis, in circumstances that I probably do not want to hear about?”

Fili glared at him.

“What do you mean I'm assuming? He's got a dick, of course he's a guy! Well, I think he might be a transvestite of some sort actually, because he has breasts too.”

“Transsexual. Or Transgender.”

“What?”

“That's the word you'll be wanting to use about your _sister_ , probably. Now tell me, did she say, at any point, that she was a man?”

“He punched me after claiming he was a girl.”

“Then _she's_ a girl, and you probably deserved that punch. That will be the first lesson of you 'Introduction to Queerness' class: people are what they say they are, and if you don't respect that, you're an ass.”

“But...”

“Do you like your sister? Do you want her to still treat you as family, and to tolerate your presence in her life?”

“I agreed to play in a series I knew nothing about just to spend a couple month near her. Of course I love her!”

“Then apologize to her, and accept the fact that she is a woman, no matter what the details of her anatomy are.”

Fili nodded, and finished his glass.

“How come when you say it, I accept it as a fact,” he wondered, “but when my mother told me the same thing, I just got angry and refused to listen?”

“Well, I'm not yelling, for one thing. And of course, my natural charisma means that I can tell people the truth and they will not question it. There's a reason the cast me as the Healer, you know.”

“Thought it was because you slept with Galadriel and she's one of the producers now.”

“That helped too, but I'm sleeping with her because of my charisma and my great... _wisdom_.”

“TMI, Gandalf. TMI.”

 

* * *

 

It took him two weeks to go back to Kili and Ori's flat, though in his defence, the whole crew had gone to Iceland for an episode, so he felt he had a good excuse.

Kili wasn't home when he came, but Ori was. She opened the door when he knocked, and closed it in his face when she saw it was him.

“I came to talk!” he claimed through the door. “To say I'm sorry, I reacted the wrong way, and I shouldn't have, and if Kee's here...”

“She not, and even if she were, you wouldn't see her! Just because you were drunk doesn't excuse anything!”

“I didn't say that because I was drunk, I said it because I'm an idiot, but could we please not have this conversation with me shouting in the corridor? I think the neighbours don't need to hear all of it!”

He'd done a lot of reading in his two weeks. Gandalf had found him all sorts of pamphlets and websites that explained all that there was to explain about Kili's supposed situation, and from there he'd made a list of the things he could and could not do.

Discussing her situation by yelling in a public space in front of people she'd have to face everyday was definitively on the 'do no do' list.

And Ori must have agree, because she opened the door again, and though she was glaring at him, she let him in.

“So you won't try to use the 'I was to drunk to think' card, then?”

“Well, I was drunk enough to start making out with my sister, so it didn't help, but I'm not sure I'd have reacted a lot better if I'd been sober. It... took me by surprise, and I wasn't expecting that. I acted like an ass, I'm terribly sorry, and I hope I'll have a second chance someday.”

Ori's glare remained as she looked at him, trying to figure out if he was sincere or not. He must have been convincing, because she sighed, rolled her eyes, and offered him tea.

“I can't say for sure she will forgive you,” she warned him a few moments later when she came back with two nice hot cups. “You've said pretty much all the worse things you could have said to her.”

“I know. I... informed myself.”

“You informed yourself about the fact that you were surprised that your sister was born male?”

“I informed myself about all the other things,” Fili corrected, staring at his cup of tea. “I don't... really have any good excuse for _that_. But, well, I was _six_ when our parents divorced, and I don't have many memories of... of _before_ , and I barely got to see her _after_. She wore dresses on the birthday pictures Mom sent me, she was the district's champion in the women's competitions of archery, she told me she had crushes on boys and she wished she looked more like Kate Winslet. What was I supposed to think?”

“She's been lucky that your mother never minded,” Ori admitted. “But your father, didn't he ever... say anything?”

“Da didn't care 'bout Kee. I always assumed it was because she wasn't making money for him, but I guess the rest didn't help. He's the sort of guy who starts sentences with 'I am not a homophobe, _but_ ', and he freaked out a fair bit when he realized I liked guys as much as girls.”

“And yet he never said a thing about your sister?”

“Not a word. Look, I know I messed up big time, and I swear I'm sorry. Do you... do you think you could convince Kee to let me talk to her one day? I'll get it if she doesn't want to have anything to do with me, but I'd like to properly apologize to her at least?”

He did his best impression of a pleading puppy then, a face that he'd stolen from Kili. He wasn't as good at it as his sister, but it still seemed to work.

“I think she'll be happy to talk to you again,” Ori admitted. “She likes you a whole lot. Well. _That night_ would never have happened if she hadn't liked you, of course, because alcohol or not, she's not the sort to just snog anyone like that. And she's... look, she'll get mad if she learns I told to about it, but you've got to understand that her ex, he... he wasn't a nice guy, and things ended badly between them because she told him she wasn't going to get surgery. That guy was a fucking dick, and she'd much better off without him, really, but she loved him and she lost him because of that, and now she thought she'd lost _you_ because of that too.”

Fili frowned. He'd heard some vague mentions of Kili's ex before, with a sad sigh if it was his sister talking, with an disgusted pout if it was from Ori, and he hadn't thought too much about it, assuming that Ori's contained anger was just jealousy of some sort.

Learning that there was more to it made him furious, and he wondered if he could get away with sending the man to the hospital for having hurt Kili.

“Don't you even think of doing anything stupid,” Ori warned him. “She doesn't want anyone to get in trouble because of him.”

“But you know who he is and where he lives.”

“Yeah, and I'm never telling you. Look, I didn't tell you so that you'd go all knight in a shining armour on his ass! I told you so that you'd know that you... you can't do that to her again. She'll forgive you once, probably, but she won't do it twice. Are we clear?”

“Very clear.”

“Good. Now go away, it's probably best if she gets some time to prepare before she sees you again. I'll text you when you can come around again, kay?”

“Okay. Thanks a lot, you're _amazing_. I mean it, I'm in your debt.”

“Then don't worry, I'm _sure_ I'll find some way for you to repay me,” Ori assured him with a wicked little grin.

 

* * *

 

A couple days later, Ori let him know that he could come if he had time, that Kili was ready to listen to him. But when he arrived at the flat, she seemed just as furious as she had been that night.

“Ori says you said you'd gone to Iceland,” she said coldly. “Bit far just to avoid making excuses, isn't it?”

“We were shooting! There's this thing where we have to go on that volcano to drop in it the...”

“Spoilers!” both girls screamed at once.

“We do not want to know!” Ori exclaimed.

“Spoil the next season for us, and I swear this is the last time we're speaking,” Kili added. “You've done us enough wrong as it is, don't add to it.”

Fili quickly nodded.

“No telling about work. Fine. Good. Can do. But you asked why I hadn't come earlier, and that's why. Doing it by phone would... it would have felt like cheating. So here I am. In person. Apologizing because I've been an idiot and I've said horrible things to you, which I shouldn't have done, and I am so sorry.”

“You call me a tranny,” Kili replied coldly.

That was now rule one of Fili's “don't” list, along with a couple other words of the same sort.

“That was very, very wrong of me, and I shouldn't have done that, and I will never again do it,” he promised, not daring to look at anything but his hands. “If... If you give me another chance, I'll do all I can to never hurt you again, and to never.. never say anything like that again. I'll do anything you ask of me, just... just give me another chance, please.”

He did not look up, terrified that Kili might still be angry at him, that she might not want to forgive him, that he'd be sent away and lose his sister again.

“You're even more of a drama queen than uncle,” Kili sighed, “and that's saying a lot, really. Of course I'll give you another chance, there's no need to look like that. I've forgiven worse people than you. I've been forced to give other chances to people I liked a good deal less than you, too. But treat me like that again, and I'll kick you in the balls.”

“I'll help,” Ori added cheerfully.

“I suppose I should be glad that my sister has a helpful girlfriend,” Fili joked weakly, raising his head again and smiling at them.

They were both blushing terribly.

“How do you know we're together?” Kili gasped. “No one knows, we haven't told anyone!”

“Kee, _please_. Maybe I can't tell when fictional characters are shagging, but I can tell when the very real people around me _want_ to. And, you know, the way you kissed _that_ night made it pretty obvious that things were going to happen sooner or later.”

“Oh.”

There was a long, awkward silence then, and Fili wondered if he was supposed to say something. A part of him wanted to know if there was anything chance of them getting drunk and making out again, but he felt that maybe this wasn't the best moment to ask.

Another part of his brain then reminded him that it was a Friday.

“Hey, so, anyone up for a session of watching the Lone Healer? I can order Chinese.”

“I'd rather have Indian,” Kili suggested; “there's a good one down the street. And can we please, please skip the eleventh season? I just can't stand it, I swear. All in favour, raise your hand.”

Ori groaned when the two siblings raised theirs, grumbling against people who skipped seasons as if it were a major sin, but smiling all the same.

Less than an hour later, Ori and Kili were on the couch, Fili sprawled over them, and together they were laughing at the cheap costumes and the plot holes.

And all was well again.


End file.
